I feel I’m cheating a bit with this pick of The Women by Kristen Hannah as my reading challenge choice as a book recommended by a fellow blogger. I have, after all, read a lot of Kristen Hannah and would have eventually picked this one up on my own, but WHO CARES? I was definitely inspired to move it up a bit in the rotation, one would say, by Bob at Bob on Books who even chose it as one of his Best of 2024. That’s high praise.

Synopsis

Hailing from a highly respected family with deep military roots, Frankie McGrath grew up believing in heroism, having long admired the family pictures of servicemen on her father’s “wall of heroes.” When her brother, Finley, signs up as a helicopter pilot for the Vietnam War, Frankie chooses to follow him in the only capacity in which she can, as an army nurse stationed in the thick of the turmoil. Though completely ill-prepared, Frankie arrives in Vietnam during a mass casualty event, finding herself thrust into a trial-by-fire situation in which she must endure the most horrifying tests of her courage and endurance or crumple into a heap.

The novel follows Frankie through the horrors of war back to the States where she must endure a new kind of hell, a world that has no respect or understanding for what she’s been through and has no desire to help her come to terms with the things she’s seen and experienced.

Review

I love Kristen Hannah, but let me say this. She does not hold anything back. This is a novel of war, and Vietnam was a particularly brutal and controversial war. Hannah spares her readers nothing. There were times I wondered how any one person could ever mentally or emotionally survive the things Frankie endures during the war. Just when I thought it was bad, it got worse. But that’s what makes this novel so powerful. It’s raw, visceral, and the intent is to make you want to look away from the mental images placed in your head. What’s important is that these moments inspire in us the ability to truly empathize with those heroes who went off to war and came back utterly broken only to be ostracized and vilified at home.

Hannah also doesn’t spare us a deep-dive look into the controversy. She presents the war as it truly was: a senseless, poorly-executed, and patently immoral fuck-up of epic proportions. She does, however, place the blame on the shoulders of those who should have borne it rather than the people sent by the higher-ups to fight such a senseless war. Honestly, put into perspective it becomes so much more tragic realizing so many lives were lost for nothing.

Probably the most poignant aspect of this novel is its treatment of women during the Vietnam war. Their presence was completely and utterly overlooked. These nurses who often had to treat the wounded while their camp was actively being bombed came home looking for assistance with PTSD only to be told that “there were no women in Vietnam,” even by veterans and veterans’ aid groups who should have known better. The way Frankie and her fellow nurses (and other women who served in other capacities) were treated after showing acts of uncommon valor was utterly infuriating, and that’s actually an understatement. There’s also a very powerful family element here that shows the intense strain placed upon Frankie’s relationship with her very traditional parents who seem utterly incapable of embracing the true Frankie, a woman so obviously the antithesis of the debutante daughter they thought they’d raised. The way each family member processes their own separate grief and trauma with bumbling imperfection just accentuates the authenticity of this novel.

For the most part, I loved the way Hannah handled all aspects of the war and the way it followed Frankie home to the United States. She’s such an effective story teller, and she’s crafts her characters and their imperfections deftly and with a purpose. I could have done without some aspects of the love triangle. I would have preferred one of the men be removed entirely because he only provided more frustration in an already frustrating story. Sadly, there was a lot of realism in his character. I’m certainly not complaining about authenticity. The remaining love story arc I found to be a bit predictable, but in this book it was more of a needed sigh of relief. Everything else was so dark and dreary it’s nice to be thrown a tiny little lifeline to relieve some tension.

Overall, I’m very glad I read this book. It will stick with me for a long time and I will recommend it, especially to lovers of historical fiction. I will do so carefully, however, because it’s only suited for those with thick armor against intense brutality.

Published February 6, 2024 by Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781250317957. Runtime 14 hrs, 57 mns. Narrated by Julie Whelan.